“It’s okay. He didn’t feel anything. He died instantly.”
He squeezes me closer and I can smell the piney scent of his aftershave. I can feel the contours of his chest muscles through his shirt. Tristan has what I like to call a sucker punch body. It’s the ultimate proof that looks can be deceiving. From the outside, he seems slightly on the scrawny side. His jeans and shirts always fit a little loose. His Adam’s apple protrudes from his neck and does this cute contraction when he swallows. But then he takes off his shirt and it’s like, BAM! Sucker punch! Right to the gut. His muscles aren’t huge but they’re defined. Like wowza defined. And his chest is completely smooth.
“Viking DNA,” he likes to joke. “We Scandinavians are freakishly hairless.”
At first it feels nice to be comforted by Tristan. I’m reminded of why I love him so much. He has such a gentle soul. A poet’s soul. And I’m certainly not gonna complain about being pressed up against his chest muscles. But then the sound of my own sniffling starts to echo in my ears and I’m reminded of our fight last night. And how I basically went from normal chill girlfriend to strung-out monster in thirty seconds flat.
Tristan hates drama. This has never been a secret. He told me as much the day we met. It was actually one of the first conversations we had. We were at a party at Daphne Gray’s house. Tristan had just broken up with Colby, his girlfriend for all of six weeks, and everyone knew about it. Tristan had a long history of short relationships. Maybe that’s because he always dated the same type of girl over and over and then broke up with them for the same exact reason. It’s like someone who complains about never losing weight but eats an entire box of Oreos every night.
I push away from Tristan’s warm, inviting chest and wipe away my tears. “I’m okay,” I say. “Thanks.”
I have to remedy this. I can’t allow myself to become another melodramatic ex-girlfriend in Tristan’s life. Five months we’ve been dating. Five whole months. That’s longer than any of his past relationships. We even lasted through the summer, which, let’s face it, is like the kiss of death for high school romances. I have to prove once and for all that I’m still the same girl he fell in love with.
“Señora Mendoza. Can I use the pass?”
“En español,” she reminds me.
“¿Puedo usar el pase?”
She smiles. “Sí.”
I grab the straw sombrero from the hook on the wall and bolt out the door. It’s time to clean up this mess. Starting with my face.
Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me
11:20 a.m.
You would think a dead bird outside your Spanish class window would be the low point of your day, but it’s not. Things only go more downhill from there. Monday is an odd day, meaning we only have periods one, three, five, and seven. In fifth-period U.S. history, we have a quiz. A quiz I knew about. A quiz I totally forgot to study for due to my attention being elsewhere. Namely on my fight with Tristan.
And it’s not one of those essay-style quizzes you can just wing by being vague and witty. It’s ten multiple choice questions about the American Revolution, a chapter in our textbook that I did not read. I pretty much guess on every single question. I figure I have a twenty-percent chance of getting them right.
After we’re finished, Mr. Weylan—hands down the oldest man alive (I think he actually lived through the American Revolution)—has us swap quizzes with our neighbors so we can grade each other’s.
Needless to say, I bombed it. So much for my twenty-percent odds.
I didn’t even get one question right.
Now, the odds of that have to be pretty impressive.
Daphne Gray—yes, the same Daphne Gray who threw the party where Tristan and I first met—scribbles a big fat zero on the top of my quiz, beside which she draws a smiley face.
She tilts her head. “Better luck next time, Sparks.”
You know that voice people use when they want you to know for certain that they’re being insincere? That’s Daphne’s voice as she slides the quiz onto my desk. Like it brings her immense pleasure to watch me fail.
Here’s the thing. Before I started dating Tristan, girls like Daphne Gray didn’t even know my name. She never would have given me a second thought. Before that party at her house, Owen and I just kind of